Women’s awkwardness

It’s widely agreed that the lack of women’s awkwardness is a glaring fault in Awkwardness. I defended myself initially by claiming that there were not very many women characters or woman-centered shows that belonged to the contemporary “awkwardness trend,” and at the time that was true enough. If I were to rewrite the book today, though, I would not simply include the newer “awkward humor” explicitly centered on women, which has arisen in the wake of the trend I was responding to. Instead, I would have to place awkward entertainment in a broader historical context, which would reveal a shocking truth: women have always been awkward and have always been portrayed as such in American television. I mean this very precisely. “Girls” are not awkward, because girls have a set place — as the object of boys’ affections. Mothers are also not awkward, because they have a set role. Women, however, are awkward, and more radically so than any man could be. Career women, young women out dating, even young married women who are still feeling their way into the role and don’t have children yet — none of them have a place, none of them have a standard or model.

Women’s awkwardness seemed to be absent from the trend because women’s awkwardness has been a constant feature of the comedy landscape. Hence we can understand the reactionary character of Apatow-style men’s awkwardness — it is attempting to claim the comedic territory that has previously been identified with women. It claims there has been a reversal of power, such that women are essentially in charge and therefore in possession of convincing standards and norms. In this view, women are not afflicted with awkwardness, but are the cause of it. This reclaiming of awkwardness goes hand in hand with an agenda of taming it through domestication — a phenomenon for which women are also paradoxically blamed. It’s as though men were watching Sex and the City and felt jealous that they couldn’t experience the same insecurities.